


The Last

by Radio Rascal (Vagrants)



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Post-Pacifist Route, Time Shenanigans, implied post-apocalyptic setting, references to genocide/other timelines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 14:29:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6614260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vagrants/pseuds/Radio%20Rascal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frisk resets. A lot. Sans has seen the surface. A lot. Until one time the surface is very, very different.</p><p>Why?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last

**Author's Note:**

> i'm doing a bad by focusing on other writing-things instead of focusing on the unfinished writing-thing i have, but i had this idea and it wouldn't leave me alone.
> 
> every time i think in-depth about my Frisk headcanons, i get progressively sadder ideas. :(

You’re no stranger to disappointment. You don’t know for sure how many times you’ve stood on this cliff, looking at the brilliance of the sunset, telling your brother what the sun is, glancing sideways at the kid to gauge their emotions. All you know for sure is it’s happened more than once, which is infinitely more than necessary.

The rage you used to feel was like the disturbance created when a boulder falls into a still lake. The sudden appearance of something upsets the balance, but just as suddenly vanishes, leaving violent ripples of its influence. Now the waters are always still, the rare movement under the surface fleeting and inconsequential.

But under the pristine surface, something stirs. In reponse to the nearly microscopic upturn of lips on Frisk’s face, you feel...curious. You don’t know, of course, but you think this could be unusual. The only reason they would reset is because they’re unsatisfied, but they look happy.

“It’s late,” Frisk says. “It’d be better if we went exploring in the morning.”

“YES!” Papyrus exclaims. “I DON’T WANT TO DISTURB MY FUTURE FANS’ REST!”

You gaze out over the valley and the structures in the distance. You’ve never seen human buildings before, outside of books. Orange light reflects off the metal jutting into the sky, and you think you see windows further down, closer to the ground.

The waters ripple. You feel it threatening to burst. You need to talk to Frisk, but...you lack the determination. What comes will come regardless of what influence you try to assert over things.

You shove your hands into your pockets and shrug. “I’m gonna get some shut-eye, then, if nobody’s got a bone to pick with me.”

“WE NEED TO PACK!” Papyrus, ignoring your pun, dashes back into New Home and is gone before anyone can say anything.

Toriel smiles. “That funny little skeleton has a point, actually. We all should prepare for the move.”

“I’ll work on alerting the citizens,” Asgore says.

Undyne seizes Alphys by the shoulders. “WE SHOULD BINGE-WATCH ANIME!”

“W-why?”

“So we’ll be culturally prepared! Duh!”

“O-oh...heh, yeah…” You can practically hear the sweat forming on the dinosaur’s face.

You stick around for just a moment, studying the others. Nobody else seems to notice what you’ve picked up. Maybe you’re being paranoid. But as you turn, you realize Frisk is still staring, quiet.

One shortcut and a brief walk later, you’re at your house. Even though only Papyrus is inside, the interior is abuzz with activity, noise, and the beginnings of a stack of boxes in the living room.

“BROTHER! HELP THE GREAT PAPYRUS PACK OUR THINGS!”

You glance around. “...Nah. You’re doin’ a great job by yourself.”

Papyrus stamps his foot on the floor. “SANS!”

“You can pack, sans Sans.” You give an orbital an exagerrated rub. “I’m sleepy. Been a long day, y’know.”

Papyrus’s expression softens. “IT HAS, ACTUALLY. SUCH EXCITEMENT ONLY SERVES TO ENERGIZE THE GREAT PAPYRUS, BUT I UNDERSTAND IF IT HAS MADE YOU TIRED.” He folds his arms. “BUT I WILL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR PACKING YOUR ROOM!”

“Fair enough.” You start up the stairs.

“GOOD NIGHT SANS.”

“Night, bro.”

Your body lies. You’re tired, for sure, but it’s a superficial fatigue. Only skin deep. Your mind doesn’t stop for several hours. You dream of metal ribs that stretch to the sun.

* * *

Skeletons don’t sweat, and they don’t suffer the same consequences from overheating or freezing as others do, but you know the air is warm. Frisk rolled up their sleeves several minutes ago. Toriel and Asgore look like they regret wearing those stuffy robes. They walk on opposite sides of the group, the king offering furtive glances every few minutes, but you can see Toriel attempting to ignore his presence.

Papyrus and Undyne are far ahead of the others. Frisk has to call after the pair occasionally to make sure everyone stays on the path. Plants cover the ground, but they appear to instinctively know where they’re going.

The ground’s already mostly evened out. The forest you’ve been walking through all morning is beginning to thin, as well. You know you’ve probably wondered this before, but Frisk doesn’t look very old. How did they climb that far up the mountain?

Maybe you’ll ask them when you confront them about this timeline.

When the forest ends, everyone’s standing on a hillock with a much better view of their destination. The dread is like the knife you swear you shouldn’t remember.

“Frisk,” Toriel starts, tentative, “do humans really live there?”

This close, it’s easy to see that the city is dead and has been left like this for a long time. Nature has started to reclaim the skeleton of what used to be a skyscraper, the highway into the city is cracked and overgrown, the smaller buildings around the central structure are crumbling.

Frisk bows their head, then a moment later gives it a shake. “Not anymore. Never again.”

Toriel startles. Asgore glances at her, then at you. Undyne and Papyrus are a few feet away, trying to mutter and failing.

“What do they mean there aren’t any humans?” Undyne asks.

“DON’T HUMANS LIVE ON THE SURFACE?” Papyrus shrugs with his hands up in a helpless gesture. He looks at you. “SANS, DON’T HUMANS LIVE ON THE SURFACE?”

“They’re supposed to.” You walk up to Frisk. “Hey, kiddo, I think we have to have a talk.”

Their brown hair obscures their face. When they look at you, their wide smile shocks you. “Yeah, we do. That’s why I made all of you walk out with me like this.”

You gape. Has this happened before?

“I wanted Mettaton to come, too, but I should have figured he wouldn’t want to walk through the grass and muck right before meeting humanity.” Frisk huffs. “Well...what’s left of them. I’ve gotta ask first, though; is anyone mad at me?”

“Whatever could we be angry for, my child?” Toriel asks.

“I technically deceived you. I didn’t tell you about the state of the surface world or of humanity.” Frisk gestured with an open hand to the city. “The whole world’s like this. Destroyed and run-down.”

Asgore smiles warmly. “You had your reasons, I’m sure. It would have been terrible to have to tell us that...that things were like this.”

Undyne hunches her shoulders and marches forward. “Yeah, I’m mad!” She glares down at Frisk. “You grew up in a place like this?! And this is supposed to be our home? Nobody’ll wanna live in a place that’s all junked up! You could have stayed in the Underground! You didn’t have to…” Undyne deflates. She folds her arms across her chest and whips around, back now to Frisk.

“Didn’t have to risk my life to you and everyone else?” Frisk asks.

Undyne flinches.

“W-we wouldn’t have believed them without proof anyway,” Alphys speaks up.

“You’re right,” Undyne mumbles. “I would have just thought...they were trying to get out of…”

Toriel strides forward and envelops Frisk in a hug. “I’m so sorry, my child. We can return to the Underground if you wish.”

“In a cynical way, it might be better this way,” Asgore says with a sigh. “There won’t be another war…”

Toriel glares at him. “ _ Asgore _ ! There are no humans left. For all we know, Frisk is…” She looks down at them and stops before she accidentally opens some unseen wound.

You don’t think Frisk is hurting at all. In fact, they’ve looked overjoyed for the last several hours.

“Y-you’re right. I’m sorry.” Asgore tries to shrink under her admonishment, but he’s so huge there’s no effect.

You realize Papyrus has been quiet. He’s sitting on the ground and looking at the ruined cityscape. “Bro, you all right?”

“NO,” he replies simply, without elaboration.

_ Damn, _ you think. This is pretty dire. You glance at Frisk and as if the day couldn’t break more of your expectations, you feel that ages-old torrent kicking up again.

Emotions remain, unbound by time and space. You know what you were like before the loops began, but have no idea what you did during those early timelines, or what you may have done in a situation like this. There’s  _ you _ from yesterday, and a succession of  _ you _ from today that became forever, but nothing to truly link one to another.

Would the original you chew them out, accuse them on the spot, wait to confront them alone, cry, scream, go nuts, stare into space like Papyrus, strip naked and laugh like a maniac? In actuality, there may have existed a you who would have done any of those things and more. In actuality, you will likely become them.

“Sans,” Frisk says, breaking from Toriel’s gentle hold. “You look like you wanna say something.”

_ I want to say too much, _ you think. You shrug. “Just taking it all in. It’s pretty  _ ground-breaking _ news.”

Frisk smirks. “I’ll bet.”

“Couldn’t there be other humans in there?” Undyne asks. She’s been watching Papyrus as closely as you and you can read the concern in her face.

Frisk shakes their head. “No way. I would’ve met them.”

Alphys, sweating and trembling profusely from the stress of the situation, steps forward. “I-I-I di-disagree, Frisk...that’s a b-big city. Just because y-you haven’t see--seen another human doesn’t mean they’re not there.” She picks at her own claws, looking down. It seems offering a contrary opinion took a lot out of her.

Asgore nods. “I think we should do a quick search of the city. We need to know if there are other humans.”

“We need to help them if they’re out there,” Toriel says. “That place doesn’t look safe, nor nice to live in.”

Papyrus has been listening all along, because he springs up and grins at the group. “I WILL LEAD THE SEARCH PARTY! WE WILL DEFINITELY FIND ANY AND ALL THE HUMANS!!”

You let out a quiet, relieved sigh. Undyne relaxes too. Seeing Papyrus back to his old self is a comfort among the confusion.

“It’ll be easier if we get other volunteers,” Asgore says as he turns back the way they’d all come, “and the people need to be told anyhow.”

You watch as the entire group starts to fade back into the forest. Toriel stops at the edge and glances back at you and Frisk, the last two on the hill.

“Aren’t you coming too?” she asks. “Either of you?”

“I’d like to stay here,” Frisk answers.

Toriel nods in understanding. “Watch over them, Sans.”

“Will do.” You wave at her as she walks off. When she’s gone, you set Frisk in the center of an empty stare. “So, wanna explain?”

“Sure,” Frisk chirps. “I know you know about the time travel stuff, so I won’t bother with that. But did you ever think that time travel could have an effective range?”

You suck in a breath, already seeing where this is going. “No, but then the concept of it doesn’t make much sense. Time can be manipulated, sure, it can even ‘behave’ differently, but what you’re suggesting…”

They shrug. “It’s real, though. When I reset, when I rewind time to the moment I fell into the Underground, time still goes on for the surface. I noticed it after a while and decided to use it to my advantage.”

Your brow furrows.

Frisk sits down, not meeting your eyes. There’s something indescribably distant in that look. “I used to let the world go on, when we reached the surface. Monsters and humans lived together for a time.” They hug their knees to their chest. “By the time I reach my teen years, they start another war with monsterkind. By the time I’m twenty, monsters go extinct.”

You fight your growing horror to keep what you hope is a neutral expression. You of all people should have guessed that would happen. But no, even you had a naive outlook on things when it came to the surface. You realize that now in a single moment; like that, another  _ you _ falls into the depths. If they reset again, you might remember this feeling of vacuous despair, but not the conversation that had prompted it.

“I can’t remember where I came from anymore. I might have been an orphan but I’m not sure.” Frisk looks at you. “I don’t think I ever had anything to go back to anyway. I think that’s why I kept resetting at first, because it took me a while to get everyone to the surface. I wanted to stay with you, with everyone.

“The first time I got you all to the surface, I thought everything was going to be fine too. But...history repeats itself, right? Hah. So I went back, trying again and again to keep another war from happening.” They shrug. “No matter what I did, nothing changed. My determination doesn’t have quite as much of an effect against other humans, I guess.”

Your head spins. You want to get back to your lab and--well, actually, you’re not sure what you’d do, but you feel the need to bury yourself in objective and unfeeling data for a while. A long while.

Frisk shudders, and they pluck a blade of grass they’d been winding around their finger. “I lost hope, like you did, Sans. I went crazy for a while. You’ve got to know what I’m talking about.”

“I do, and I was gonna ask about that.” You finally join them on the ground, sitting cross-legged. “What? You thought since everyone was going to die anyway, you should be the one to do it?”

Frisk nods stiffly. “I got this strange idea that it would somehow be better for you and everyone else to die by my hand than by humanity’s. But I met Chara because of what I did, and that’s an entire separate can of worms that would take forever to explain.” They wave off the name of the first fallen human like it’s nothing. “Without going into too much detail, it took me a while to get away from them. When we reached the surface with them in control, it ended even worse than usual.”

You don’t ask. Not because you don’t want to know, but because the kid obviously needs to talk at their own pace.

“But I did eventually shake them off, and I told myself I wouldn’t do what I did again. I still felt hopeless, but I didn’t like the feeling of being controlled like that.” Frisk grimaces, but their expression reverts to being flat again in a moment. “We do have one thing in common, Chara and I. We both dislike humans. I don’t feel bad at all that they’re gone.”

“You sound really sure of that,” you say. “That there’s none left, I mean.”

Frisk shakes their head. “I’ve been up here before. By myself. I did something to prevent the barrier from being broken so I could wander around by myself and let time flow normally. I watched the world go to waste. There’s nothing left, anywhere.

“Then I reset.” They smile. “And I think it’ll be the last one. I’ve given monsterkind the Earth, like you deserve. There won’t be anything to tear me apart from my family again.”

A sudden agony seizes you when you hear that word.  _ Family. _ Frisk has lived with you and Toriel and Papyrus and Undyne and everyone else for years--no, centuries, or even millennia. They’re older than any human or monster should be, but they sit in the guise of a preteen child. And unlike you, they carry the memories of what went wrong along with the feelings.

Understanding and empathy and grief and so many other things, like waves crashing into each other on a confused ocean, flow through you and you don’t know what to say or do. What can be said to someone who’s heard everything? What can be done to reduce an infinity of suffering?

You remember raw, black, drowning grief and scalding agony from past timelines, and how you attribute them to Papyrus’s death. The mere idea of your brother dying is enough to give you nightmares, and you’ve often wondered if the nightmares aren’t memories.

You can relate far too well, even though Frisk is the one who caused those feelings in you too many times to count. It’s their fault you have those nightmare-memories, but at the same time, that’s from another timeline and those are feelings felt by another you, so there’s an element of distance you can’t describe.

You stopped being angry at Frisk a long time ago because you became darkly accepting of whatever came your way. Now you can’t be angry with them because it’s the same as being angry at yourself. Of course a little kid would break under their circumstances.

“I can finally live out my life like normal,” Frisk says, breaking the silence. You didn’t realize you’d just been sitting there thinking. “The farthest I’ve been is twenty. The legal drinking age in this country was twenty-one, I think.”

You blink at them.

They grin. “I’m joking. I’ve tried alcohol before--don’t tell Toriel--I think it’s pretty gross.”

“Heh.” You put your fake grin back on, realizing their story effected you outwardly as well as inwardly. “You know, that’s all pretty amazing, what you just told me. What’s more amazing is that I believe every word.”

“How could you not? The proof’s right in front of you.”

You gaze the skyline. The sky’s grown grey while Frisk was speaking, large dark clouds rolling in from the north. You’ve never felt a pressure like this. It’s physical, like the sky itself is pressing you down.

“It looks like it’s gonna storm,” Frisk says, standing, their eyes on the same clouds. “Surface weather can get pretty bad. We should find somewhere to wait it out.”

You hike a thumb over your shoulder. “Mountain?”

Frisk shakes their head. “It’s coming in fast, and if it rains really hard, it’ll make the climb really dangerous. The city’s closer.”

As you walk in step with Frisk, you keep looking at the sky. You’ve read about storms in books, but haven’t experienced anything worse than the perpetual snowfall in Snowdin.

What you take shelter in is the gutted remains of what used to be someone’s house. The roof is entirely gone, and so is most of the second floor. Just as you and Frisk get under the last vestige of the first floor ceiling, the rain begins.

The Underground gets short showers thanks to Waterfall’s proximity to Hotland, but nothing like this. Your eyes widen and you are both afraid and enthralled. Freedom is dangerous, you think. Dangerous and glorious.

“Sans,” Frisk says.

“Yeah, kiddo?”

“Whatever you think, just know...I did everything because I thought it would help you guys. You’re all I’ve ever cared about.”

“Aw...it’s okay, kid.” You swing an arm around their shoulders and hold them against your side. “It worked out in the end, right?”

They bury their face in the fabric of your hoodie and nod wordlessly.

All that pain, all the time that had to pass, had been for this moment and every moment going forward from now. You’re cautious, but you allow yourself some confidence. Even if Frisk resets again for some reason, this memory will remain with them. This  _ you _ will be with them, and they’ll bring you here again. Someday.

But for now you’re here, on the surface, hiding under rotting shambles from the strength of nature, and Toriel and Papyrus and everyone else is alive, and the rain is like nothing you’ve seen or heard before but it’s real and honest and smells like new beginnings.

The storm doesn’t last long, and doesn’t get any rowdier than a couple distant growls of thunder. Your slippers splash through one puddle and are instantly soaked. You frown.

At least the ghost of a roof held on enough to keep you and the kid from getting significantly wet. Toriel will have a fit over the both of you.

“Ah, I hope they didn’t get caught in that,” Frisk says as they walk with you down the deserted streets.

“I don’t even think the clouds reached that far,” you reply, pointing out the clear boundary between sky and cloud in the east. By now, Asgore’s surely mobilized a human search party and they’re trudging down Mt. Ebott while you and Frisk make your way back towards it. “It would’ve been all right anyhow. Asgore’s the  _ raining _ king, after all.”

That earns a wry smirk from Frisk.

“The surface hasn’t rained on their parade quite yet.”

“That was awful.”

“I try.”

Yeah, you can get used to this. You don’t know for sure how often you may have walked through the mud like this, the kid by your side, but it feels as fresh as the first time. And that counts for something.


End file.
